Yeah, I had the meeting today where I found out where I'm going to be student teaching, but, first thing's first:

HOW BADLY DID "BATTLE OF THE NETWORK STARS" SUCK?!? For one, it really should've been called "Battle of the NBC Stars" because it wasn't even a competition between NBC, ABC, and CBS (as it was in the days of yore), instead, it was just two teams of people from various NBC shows. Second, it really should've been called, "Battle of the NBC C-LISTERS". I wouldn't refer to the woman from the Doritos commercials, a guy from "Hidden Hills" (Is that show still on?), or Mario Lopez as "stars". Gabe Kaplan and Adrienne Barbeau - now THEY are stars. Last (and then I'll move on to more important topics), what's with all of the "extreme" events. I don't want to see people swinging over cliffs or rolling big balls down a hill - give me the tried-and-true obstacle course, tug-'o-war, and "Simon Sez".

I'm feeling a bit beat up at the moment. I got up "early" this morning so that I could go to heaven (i.e. Amoeba) to pick up the new Over the Rhine cd (which I'm listening to right now - it's GOOD) before my Student Teaching Orientation meeting. So, I ate a small bowl of Chex (corn) and a yogurt (strawberry cheescake flavor - yum) before catching a bus to Haight Street. Then, when I got down to SFSU for the meeting I had a large coffee on a largely empty stomach. Sure, I had a smoothie a bit later, but the damage had already been done. Oh, and add to that the fact that my stomach was doing flips and turns and filled with butterflies because of the whole "I'm here for a meeting about Student Teaching which kind of freaks me out" thing.
Long story short, I got placed at Bryant Elementary School which, thankfully (THANKFULLY!) is only about 4 blocks from our apartment. It's especially cool that the school is so close because they start the day at 7:50 AM (I was hoping that I'd get an 8:50 AM school...) - doesn't that seem REALLY early? A couple of other cool things: Monica (from my Cohort/program) got placed at the same school - at least there will be a familiar face - and, a woman who was at the meeting told me that there is a GREAT male Kindergarten teacher at the school. So, I told the supervisor woman (who will be finding specific classrooms for us this weekend) that I wanted to be placed with this guy. Fingers crossed... What REALLY sucks, though, is that San Francisco public schools start THIS MONDAY, and we won't be officially going out to the school until later next week. Officially, they aren't requiring us to start until September 2nd which is incredibly ridiculous to me. I really want to be in my classroom on the first day of school, AND, it seems like it would be a good thing to be able to talk with the Master Teacher before s/he starts the year. So much for that. When I did my student teaching in Indiana (gulp, 10 years ago...), I knew the Spring BEFORE where I was going to be - so, I attended district meetings with the teacher, and got to help her set up the classroom over the Summer. [I'll get into/describe that student teaching experience some other time... Soon, though...]